Space History for June 18

If you are not already a subscriber, you
are welcome to enter your email address here to sign up to receive the Space
History newsletter on a daily basis.Under no circumstances will we
release your legitimate email address entered here to outside persons or
organizations, and it will only be used for mailing the specific information you
have requested.

Enter your email address here:

Unsubscribe instructions are included in every newsletter issue in
case you decide you no longer wish to receive it.

Note: We record the IP address from which subscriptions
are entered to help prevent SPAM abuses.

Race To Space
Someone will win the prize...... but at what cost?
Visit RaceToSpaceProject.com
to find out more!

1178Five Canterbury monks saw what appeared to be a meteor hit the Moon, possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed, but questions remain. Current oscillations of the Moon's distance, on the order of meters, may be a result of this collision.ref:science.nasa.gov

Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, (19 January 1851 - 18 June 1922) was a Dutch astronomer, best known for his extensive studies of the Milky Way and as the first discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation.ref:en.wikipedia.org

1952H. Julian Allen of NACA Ames Laboratory conceived the "blunt nose principle," significant to ICBM nose cone and Mercury capsule development, which proposed a blunt shape would absorb only 0.5% of the heat generated by reentry into the atmosphere.ref:www.astronautix.com

1959USSR launched Luna E-1A No.1 (a.k.a. E-1 No.5 or Luna 1959A) from Baikonur, an attempt to reach the Moon and impact its surface. However, the inertial system failed at T+153 seconds and the vehicle was destroyed by range safety.ref:nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov

1977NASA's Space Shuttle "Enterprise" carried a crew aloft for the first time, in a captive active flight, attached to the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The flight from Edwards lasted 55 minutes 46 seconds.ref:en.wikipedia.org

The launch of STS 7 on 18 June 1983 proceeded as scheduled with no delays.

Flying on STS 7, Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. The flight also represented the first use of the robotic arm remote manipulator system (RMS) to deploy and retrieve a satellite. Two communications satellites were deployed, ANIK C-2 for TELESAT Canada, and PALAPA-B1 for Indonesia, both attached to Payload Assist Module-D (PAM-D) motors. Seven Get Away Special (GAS) canisters in the cargo bay held a variety of experiments including ones studying effects of space on the social behavior of an ant colony in zero gravity. Ten experiments mounted on the Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-01) performed research in forming metal alloys in microgravity and the use of a remote sensing scanner. The orbiter's small control rockets fired while SPAS-01 was held by the remote manipulator system to test movement on the extended arm. Experiments to investigate space sickness were carried out. The other payloads on the flight were: Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications-2 (OSTA-2); Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES); Monodisperse Latex Reactor (MLR); and one Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiment.